


It’s Nothing but Time and a Face that You Lose

by fiveyaaas



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Deception, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Five is working as an assassin, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Morally Ambiguous Character, Murder, Protective Number Five | The Boy, Pseudo-Incest, Vanya is trying to write a novel, this is entirely based off of a tumblr text post
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26142178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: The edits on her manuscript might have been the real cause of her frustration. Despite everything she had tried, the story felt unrealistic. Vanya knew that she could just write the memoir. She knew even that it would sell. People probably would prefer a story from the alluring Allison or the intriguing Diego or the leader Luther, but Vanya knew that people ate up the Umbrella Academy like junk food. Reginald, despite being a billionaire (although, realistically, the rich get richer mentality might have been the direct cause of this mentality), had used his soldier children as merchandise opportunities just as much as he had used their capabilities of burning the skeletons in his closet.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 15
Kudos: 136





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to wait to post this until I finished every chapter, but I felt like I would excuse myself from writing it if I did that. This is based off a textpost on tumblr that talked about a killer dating a writer and... well, since Five is a canon killer and Vanya is a canon writer. It had to happen.

Vanya brushed the bangs stubbornly back from her face, wishing she had a bobby pin. They had grown out longer in her refusal to cut them, but they are now at the length where they’ve become deeply annoying. For a few seconds, she considered getting a pixie cut, but she tended to associate major hair changes with bravery and, _well._

The edits on her manuscript might have been the real cause of her frustration. Despite everything she’d tried, the story felt unrealistic. Vanya knew that she _could_ just write the memoir. She even knew that it would sell. People probably would prefer a story from the alluring Allison or the intriguing Diego or the leader Luther, but Vanya knew that people ate up the Umbrella Academy like junk food. Reginald, despite being a billionaire (although, realistically, the rich get richer mentality might have been the direct cause of it), had used his soldier children as merchandising opportunities just as much as he had used their capabilities of burning the skeletons in his closet. 

Vanya knew that she was not a member of the Umbrella Academy. Maybe that was what made it impossible to write a personal narrative that was not clouded and obscured by the label of “fiction”. Or _maybe_ it was the fact that every time she started to write about the missing Number Five, she had to stop typing after she wrote “sole confidante.” 

Five would probably have no troubles writing. He’d never had trouble doing anything, a natural at literally every task thrown in front of him. It was almost infuriating. He could do everything from knife throwing to complex equations atypical for his age to listening to her talk about her fears and making her feel welcome to speaking the many languages they learned clearly and concisely to accompanying her violin on the piano when she asked. Again, Vanya wondered where Five was, and she wondered if he would ever come home. 

She just didn’t know what home meant for them. 

Vanya ignored her thoughts, them being neither healthy nor helpful. She scratched angry red marks on her manuscript on a line about a character with brownish-black hair and green eyes and smelled like coffee and clouds of chalk. She decided that felt too cliche for the genre she was writing in, and she would have to change that character completely for this narrative. Even if it meant another six months before she could send it to a publisher, there was no _fucking_ way she would make a cliche love interest for the soft-spoken main character. 

Vanya was just about to go get another cup of coffee (in hopes that the barista would stop sending her evil eyes) when she glanced up, seeing a man that appeared to be in his late thirties staring straight at her. At twenty seven years old, Vanya normally would have tried to casually haul ass out of there when a man was looking at her like this. She didn’t feel threatened by it, though. If she was being completely honest, it looked like he had just zoned out at one point, probably not even realizing he _was_ looking at her. 

Of course, as soon as she had the thought, he smirked at her. As she cocked her head to the side, he looked back down to a notebook placed on the table in front of him. He pulled out a pen, scribbling onto the paper.

Vanya _really_ did not want to edit love interests with brownish-black hair and bright green eyes right now, so she walked to the man with the brownish-black hair (though, she noted, it _did_ have a few streaks of gray) and bright green eyes instead. 

“Were you staring at me?” Vanya asked bluntly. 

Instead of answering her, he glanced up at her, eyebrows arched and shaking with silent laughter. Though at the first sight of him she’d thought his eyes looked almost irritated in their intensity, they were now dancing with amusement. 

“Do I have something on my face?” Vanya asked, worried now that he’d actually been staring at her for _that._ Self-consciously, she flicked the bangs out of her eyes again. 

“No,” the man said, and, though she could still hear the amusement in it, his voice held a sense of hastiness as well. “Well, actually, you do have red ink blotches on your cheek, but I assume that’s just from whatever you’re working on.”

Vanya moved to wipe it off, and he started writing again. 

“What kind of math is that?” Vanya gestured to his notepad, smiling faintly when she remembered Five’s walls, which had long since been painted over. He’d often gotten in trouble for scribbling on them so frequently, but he’d been so persistent, always willing to spout off his theories to her if she asked.

Who’d have thought they’d eventually take him away from her? 

“It looks like something my brother would be working on. You don’t know this, but he’s actually a giant nerd.”

“Are you flirting with me over _math_ while simultaneously comparing me to your _brother?_ ” His voice held all amusement now, and she wanted to scowl. “Because I can assure you—”

“I am not _flirting_ with you,” she interrupted, not wanting to open the can of worms he’d offered her.

“Oh, well, _in that case._ I am working on a theory currently, dealing with the concept of multiple universes.”

Vanya was intrigued, already pulling out a chair and sitting down (a gesture that only provoked him to arch a brow at her). “Hasn’t it not been technically confirmed that there even _are_ multiple universes?”

He shrugged. “I tend to think many things are possible, and I’m pretty certain on this one.”

Vanya thoughts travelled to her upbringing, having been raised beside six superheroed vigilante children.

She supposed she couldn’t really argue about unbelievable things.

“Why are you doing that research at a café?” 

“The coffee is bad at universities.”

“Why were you staring at me if you were so busy with your research, then?”

“Because you’re pretty.”

_“What?”_

“Because you have ink blots on your face,” he amended.

Vanya preferred the first answer. 

“What is your name?” Vanya asked, stacking up the papers of her manuscript so that they were even (though they belligerently scattered apart the second she set them down, making her scowl).

“What is it that _you_ are working on?” He gestured to the stack of paper. “I showed you mine, so, as the rule goes, you are legally and _morally_ obligated to show me yours.”

“I think you’re the one who is flirting now.”

“Oh, I’m _absolutely_ flirting, but do tell me about whatever you’re working on that has made you mutter more expletives under your breath in the past hour than a drunken pirate.”

Vanya blinked at him. “I didn’t think anybody had noticed.”

He smirked again. “I noticed, but it was cute.”

“You think me cussing was cute?”

“I think you scrunching up your nose and saying ‘fuck’ under your breath is _adorable._ ”

“Are you attempting to proposition me?”

“I’m attempting to hear about what you’re working on.”

“Fine,” Vanya plucked his coffee from in front of him, staring him in the eye as she drank out of his cup and trying not to wince because _what kind of serial killer drinks black coffee?_

“You know, drinking from strangers is frowned upon by the CDC.” 

“I imagine what you’re imagining us doing as strangers would also be frowned upon by the CDC.”

“Fair enough.” 

“I’m Vanya, by the way. What’s your name? That way we don’t have to _actually_ be strangers.”

He smirked. “I don’t have a name.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“Tell me, _Vanya,_ is this novel you’re writing some sort of enemies to lovers scenario? Because I hate to tell you, but that trope generally isn’t very realistic in the real world. Calling me a bastard is not going to put a ring on this finger.”

Vanya scowled, ignoring the last of what he said. “It’s _not_ a romance novel. And the enemies to lovers trope is actually _good_ if you’re not a grumpy, middle-aged man that harasses women at coffee shops.”

“I’ve always found childhood friends to lovers _vastly_ more entertaining.”

“I can’t imagine you’d ever even _have_ friends, so yours wouldn’t be realistic in the real world either.”

He grinned. “We’ll see about that.”

“You’re so weird,” Vanya commented. 

“A little uncreative as far as insulting goes, but I won’t say entirely off the nose.” 

“Tell me your name.”

“I am nobody.” 

“Referencing ‘ _The Odyssey’_ won’t get you in my pants.”

“I can quote the original Ancient Greek too, will that do it?”

Vanya rolled her eyes, trying to play with the top page in the stack and subtly cover the mention of the love interest’s physical characteristics. 

“You know, you want to talk about a love interest, _Odysseus_ should be it.”

“He likely cheated on Penelope,” Vanya argued. Mainly just to rattle him. 

“He spent _years_ of his life trying to go back to her, doing whatever it would take to do so. He loved her so much that he sacrificed parts of himself to get back home to her.” The man’s voice abruptly shifted to a sad, strange, oddly reminiscent quality.

Vanya cleared her throat, shaking her head clear of the thought that Five, who she had waited for for fourteen years, had not even bothered to find some way to deliver a _message_ that he was safe. “Yeah, well, that kind of love is unrealistic too,” she mumbled. 

The man cleared his throat again, and she glanced up into his green eyes, which were eyeing her curiously. “What are you really writing, Vanya?”

She huffed out a sigh, overgrown bangs fanning up as she did. “I’m _trying_ to write a sort of crime novel about a team of vigilantes.”

“A familiar story,” he laughed. “I think I’ve heard it before.”

She pinked at the ears. “I know it’s not exactly original-“

“That’s not what I meant,” he assured her smoothly. 

“And what did you mean?”

“I doubt you’d believe me if I told you.”

She frowned, heart rate picking up though, for the life of her, she had no idea why. “I think I ought to go.”

He scowled. “So soon?”

“I feel sick,” she said lamely, but he took the reasoning in solemnly. 

“Feel better,” he said, oddly sincere. He handed her a business card that only had a phone number, no name, from his suit pocket. 

Frowning more deeply, she asked, “You tell a lot of women you have no name?”

“Only the pretty ones.”

“That feels like the beginning of a serial killer story waiting to happen.”

“If you write about it,” he beamed. “Make sure nobody suspects my character did it.”

“I have to leave,” she repeated stubbornly. 

“Call me when you feel better, Vanya. I think I’ve waited too long for you.”

“You’re not Odysseus.”

“I guess that means you’re not Penelope, either.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who waited for this update!!!! I have been pretty productive at updating my multi-chaps, and I’m hoping I didn’t just jinx myself with that comment. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has left kudos or commented, and I hope you guys enjoy this update! This is going to be a relatively short multi-chap, so I think that this is again another one that will be completed by fiveya week.

Vanya fell under the comforting blanket of hot water, groaning in pleasure as it rained against her skin. She had not had hot water in her apartment for the past week, but it was finally back and it felt so good. 

She hadn’t called the man from the cafe yet. She wasn’t quite sure if she should. Part of her thought it was a good idea. If anything, ' having sex might get her inspired to write the sex scenes that she’d been struggling with. On the other hand, he definitely could be some sort of murderer that frequents coffee shops to find victims. The scale at this point was whether or not having an orgasm or not being murdered was more important to her, which really was how all relationships worked these days, wasn’t it?

At least she had hot water. That was the one thing going for her in her life. Granted, if she had a better showerhead, her dilemma in calling him might’ve been solved. 

Vanya didn’t know what it was that drew her in to him. Normally, she would’ve just left before he’d tried to strike up a conversation. The thing was, she had technically initiated it. There was something about him that felt familiar. At the very least, he felt intriguing.

Without thinking about what she was doing, she slipped her hands between her thighs, sucking in air as she did. The hot water was going to run out if she pushed it, but she let herself not care for just this instant. She ran her index finger against her folds, slipping a finger inside of her entrance first. The action wouldn’t really have done much for completion though, so she moved her thumb over the hood of her clit as well. She slammed her unused hand to the walls of the shower to hold herself up as she worked herself up quickly. She only had so much hot water, so she had to be fast about this. 

Vanya bit her lip, silencing most of her moans. It wasn’t necessarily a major concern as there were neighbors in her apartment who had come and gone but always made sure to come  _ loudly _ while they were there. She didn’t know old ladies had much of a libido until she had moved into this apartment complex, actually. Still, she had some qualms with being in leagues with the horny grandmas that lived beside her. 

It didn’t take long before she was struggling to stand, reminding herself that again this was probably not the right place to be doing this. Her eyes were sealing themselves shut, mouth open as she cried out a name that immediately made her mouth clamp shut but also made the wave of her orgasm hit her stronger than it had in quite some time. 

Maybe she should go to therapy. That seemed like an appropriate reaction for calling out-

“It’s fine,” she said, wincing at the cold water now against her skin but glad for the clarity it gave her. “It’s fine, I wasn’t thinking and a name slipped out. That’s normal. Totally normal. Maybe it’s just that I subconsciously took note of the fact that that dude had had his phone number on his card but not a name. I am completely okay. This is absolutely a valid and normal reaction.”

She knows that if she  _ actually  _ thought it was completely normal, she would have not been having a monologue in a cold shower about it. 

Vanya gets out of the shower, staring somewhere between longingly and guiltily at the cabinet where she kept peanut butter, marshmallows, and bread stored for someone who would never come home.

She pursed her lips. She needed therapy. She could pay several therapists’ light bills with the amount of problems she was suppressing.

Whatever. Tons of people had problems. 

Granted, these problems usually did not include calling out one’s adoptive brother’s name when they masturbated, but still. 

* * *

She stared at the slip of paper two weeks later, sipping mint tea that she’d made in hopes of settling the nervous edge to her stomach. 

There were several reasons why she wanted to call this man. One, the best orgasm she had had in weeks happened after yelling out her estranged adoptive brother’s name, which warranted finding somebody else to fantasize about that was  _ not _ her estranged adoptive brother. Two, the man was attractive, which would make it easy _to_ fantasize about him. Three, the man was intelligent, which meant that this could actually work out when he opened his mouth. 

(She had, in fact, broken up with many people after they had opened their mouth too long.)

(And, yes, she knew that there was a reason she was attracted to intelligent men.)

(And, yes, her therapist was fully aware of it.)

(And, no, she would not repeat what her therapist had said upon finding out.)

Of course, for all of the pros with calling this man, there was also the fact that all she knew about him was that he hit on girls at cafes and gave them his number (but not his name.) As well as this, she knew that  _ eventually  _ he would do something wrong, and she would have to leave him. She had not successfully maintained a single relationship in her life, and she did not imagine that he would be the exception. 

There was absolutely one way that the second problem could be solved. This didn’t have to mean anything. She could sleep with him, have an orgasm that didn’t make her yell out a number but instead a name (and she would, she promised herself, find out this man’s name.) Afterwards, she could lie and say that she’d call him, and she’d be on her merry way. Realistically, she could just say she didn’t want the sex to mean anything at all, and he’d probably be fine with it. 

Which circled her back to the first problem: that she knew nothing about him. He could absolutely be some sort of murderer. She watched plenty of true crime documentaries to know that anybody could be a killer. 

As she was thinking, she ran into another manuscript, one that she assumed would never be a full-fledged book. 

The first page, the title page, proclaimed in large, bolded, capital letters: “EXTRA ORDINARY: MY LIFE AS NUMBER SEVEN.” On the last page, that wasn’t really supposed to be the last page, the sentences would abruptly stop with the words “my sole confidante.” 

Vanya closed her eyes, not wanting to look over to her cabinets again, filled with ingredients to make a snack for a best friend that would never come home. As her eyes were closed, she made a decision. 

She would call him, and she would figure out beforehand if she wanted this to be something significant, granted the guy even wanted something significant, which was truly unlikely. 

Before that, though, she would buy pepper spray. 

* * *

They met up on neutral grounds. Which is to say, they met at the coffee shop again. She got there three hours early, which, she’ll admit, was mildly excessive, but she worked on her manuscript while she waited for him, sipping coffee and marking up the document. The love interest is simply too cocky yet too  _ perfect.  _ He was unrealistic. She would have to completely change him, not just his physical characteristics. Otherwise, nobody would ever possibly want to read her work. 

When she was writing notes on how to fix the love interest  _ (make him a blonde, sweet, humble woman? That sounds really nice, maybe a little bland, but that’s okay),  _ she heard a voice say, “I’ve never found myself attracted to blondes, honestly.” 

She jumped, yelping, and the man smirked, “Easy, there, Vanya.”

She scowled at him, covering her work self-consciously. “Are you always this irritating?”

“Not irritating enough for you to not call me,” the man said, pulling out a chair in front of her and sitting down and studying her reddening face. “Clearly, I’m charming enough that you want to spend more time with me, Vanya.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Stop calling you  _ your name?  _ Would you prefer a number instead? I have a distinct fondness for the number seven.”

She blinked at him. There was absolutely no way that he could know the significance of that number unless he was some sort of depraved stalker of the Umbrella Academy. Vanya was unknown to the world because she was ordinary, and it would have to take a lot of research from him to discover her.

She didn’t think he had, though. He didn’t even seem to have noticed that she’d stopped moving, just continuing on with what he was saying, “I was surprised when you called me, actually. You didn’t call for weeks, and I began to assume that you wouldn’t have called at all, Seven.” 

Vanya couldn’t handle him calling her that. “Don’t call me that,” she insisted. 

He shrugged. “It felt fair when you don’t have a name for me, but I don’t have to.”

“Would you like it if I simply called you  _ Five?”  _ Vanya spat, entirely aware _why_ it was that she specifically chose the number five. Hopefully, he wouldn’t think anything of it. 

“Oh, I would love it.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re  _ not  _ charming, you know.”

“You wound me,” the guy said, not looking wounded at all. “Why did you ask me here if you weren’t  _ charmed  _ by me?”

“Free food,” Vanya replied, rolling her red-ink pen between her thumb and forefinger and glancing back down at her notes. The guy did have a point, actually, blonde love interests weren’t as liked in this genre. She bit her lip, deciding a redhead would have to do.

“I thought you said this wasn’t a romance novel. You seem way too fascinated with this character’s looks for them not to be a love interest.”

“It’s not a-“ she frowned as he grabbed the paper, raising his brows at the words. Weakly, she said, “They’re not a  _ love interest.” _

“No, you see,” he said, smirking. “In this page alone, twice do you mention that they  _ smirk.  _ Only love interests smirk. That, or queer coded villains, I suppose, but this character hasn’t done anything to indicate the latter. Ergo, they’re the love interest.”

Vanya glared at him, ripping the paper away from him, making it crumple a little in her haste. “They are  _ not  _ a love interest.”

His eyes sparkled with amusement. “But their eyes  _ sparkled,  _ V, they’re clearly in  _ love.” _

She glared at him. “Don’t call me V, either.”

* * *

That night, she resolved to keep the blonde, sweet,  _ humble  _ love interest, setting to work on fixing her word doc. 

It was as she had finished editing the second chapter that she realized she still had not gotten his name. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! I’ll try to update when I am next able!!!!
> 
> Make sure to check out the fivevanya tumblr for information on fiveya week 👉😎👉


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I took a while to update!!! Hope y’all enjoy this!!!

It took him three weeks before he gave her a name. Part of Vanya was impressed at the guys’ ability to distract her before she asked, but, eventually, she got the answer out of him. Knowing that he’d managed to steal many kisses before she even knew his name also should  _ not  _ have been something she enjoyed.

It was the first time he had come to her apartment. He had convinced her to take a break from her strenuous writing schedule, likely in response to seeing the bags under her eyes when they had gotten breakfast earlier that week. When she had said that she didn’t want to spend a day off napping as he had suggested, claiming extraneous sleep to be one of the worst things she could do for productivity, he raised his brows and said, “What about a date at your apartment, then?”

Vanya had been absolutely certain he was referring to having sex, and, as he had somehow kept her from having it for three weeks, despite her assumption that he’d just wanted this to be a sex thing, she had readily agreed. When he showed up to her apartment with the first two seasons of  _ The X-Files  _ and junk food that her estranged brother had once snagged before making her marathon that very show, she nearly cried out of frustration. 

Rather than make herself look like a sex-crazed fool, she raised her brows and told him to take off his shoes before he came inside. He did, neatly setting them by the door, and they walked to her couch. 

“Is your regular seduction method making people witness Mulder and Scully’s sexual tension?” Vanya asked, starting a pot of coffee that he would likely not add sugar and cream to and she would likely comment about. 

The guy laughed, and she cursed herself again for not knowing his name. He was  _ good  _ at being evasive. “I once forced a friend I had a crush on to watch this show for hours, but I haven’t tried it with anyone else, no. Plus, I was eleven that time, so I would hardly use the word  _ seduction _ .”

Vanya smiled at the small sliver of information he was giving her. “I once watched this with my brother, actually. He brought Twizzlers and Junior Mints too, actually.”

“Were you close to him?”

She shrugged, “Until he ran away.”

He raised his brows, opening his mouth to say something, but Vanya commented, “It’s fine, you don’t have to say anything to that. He’s long gone, and I don’t want to talk about it, really.”

Swallowing uncomfortably, he nodded. Vanya cursed herself for bringing up something like that, and she averted her gaze, walking to her kitchen to pull two mugs out of one of the cabinets. She glanced to the cabinet beside it, where the peanut butter, marshmallows, and bread was kept, resolving that maybe she should not keep them there anymore. She didn’t keep it there for her, and Five would have come home now if he ever had planned to at all. 

He was probably happy, wherever he was. Maybe he’d found a partner and was with them right then, or maybe he was teaching at some elite university with a fake name, never acknowledging where he had come from. Or maybe he travelled to the past when he time travelled. Maybe he was long dead, having lived a long life that Vanya would have never seen. Her stomach dropped, thinking of the possibilities. 

“Vanya?”

The man was right behind her, picking up the pieces of the mug she had dropped. “You okay, V?”

She nodded weakly. 

He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead, and she leaned into the touch, making him clear his throat quickly. “All good,” he said, looking down at her lips. “Not hot.”

She blinked in confusion.

“You’re not running fever,” he amended hastily, seeing where her line of thinking had gone. “Were you just zoning out?”

“Tell me your name.”

He raised his brows, confused. “Why do you ask?”

She scowled. “I don’t want... whatever you want  _ this  _ to be without knowing your name.”

He studied her features a second before finally telling her, “Quentin.”

“Quentin?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” He asked, shoving his hands into his pockets. 

“It’s just that the prefix means ‘five.’”

“And?” He was smirking now.

He didn’t know who she was. There was no  _ possible  _ way unless he had somehow gotten past Reginald’s security. He could not possibly know. Quentin wasn’t an  _ uncommon  _ name.

“It’s nothing,” Vanya said quickly, moving to sit down on the couch. She was just being paranoid, perhaps she just missed her brother. It made sense that she would miss him, considering she was writing about-

“You’re okay, right? You’ve seemed… jumpy,” Quentin interrupted her thoughts to repeat his question, and she glanced up, blinking. 

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

He nodded, pulling a hand out of his pocket to pull a strand of hair out of her eyes. She walked to her DVD player, putting the first disc inside and trying to stave off her discomfort. The remote was atop the DVD player, and she closed her eyes for a few breaths before walking mechanically back to the couch, plastering a smile as artificial as the one Grace had given her for years. 

They sat beside each other, but she knew there was someone between them.

* * *

If she wasn’t thinking about it, it was easy to let herself sink into a relationship with Quentin. If she wasn’t thinking about it, she would never have to think about why she liked him so much, why she always tended to be attracted to people that looked like him, how she kept comparing everything he did-

She didn’t  _ need  _ to think about it. 

It had been a month since he had given his name, and he was coming over tonight. He said he needed to do research for a job (a job that he was also evasive about) but promised to bring take-out and wine. She would be working on writing while he worked on his research, and she knew she’d have to suppress her guilt the entire time. But she wouldn’t think, so it would be fine. 

Vanya set a pot of coffee on, staring at the cabinets as she did. 

It was methodical, really, to start making the sandwich for Five that she had stopped making  _ every  _ night when she had left home. Still, when she missed him, as she found herself doing more and more often lately, she would make the snack for him and set it on her kitchen counter. 

As she set the peanut butter down, haphazardly screwing on the lid and licking the knife. She could feel tears pricking the edges of her vision just as she heard the knock on the door. 

“You okay?” Quentin asked as she opened it, holding a take-out bag, a laptop sleeve, and a bottle of peach moscato (he had laughed when she said it was her go-to for wine, and he’d always bring it when she said she needed a drink.) 

She nodded. 

“You seemed upset when I called you earlier,” he noted, walking to the kitchen to set down the take out bag and set the wine in the fridge. He frowned at the sandwich, and she felt her heart starting to pound. “I could’ve come earlier if you were hungry, V.”

“Oh, no!” Vanya yelped. He raised a brow at her, silently commanding her to continue speaking. “It was a… force of habit.”

His voice sounded amused, but she thought she could sense a note of panic in his voice. “You make sandwiches out of habit?”

“It’s stupid,” Vanya said, shifting her weight and crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can we not talk about it?”

He watched her just a few seconds before saying, “Alright.”

“Did you…” Vanya tugged at a strand of her hair, trying not to think of Five but failing. “Did you want to get to work immediately?”

“Sure, sweetheart, it’s just some… historical research, though, so, if you want to talk at all, feel free to at any moment.” He grabbed a pair of plate and forks for them, and she wordlessly took what he offered, feeling nervous for reasons she couldn’t entirely explain. 

Guilt. It was guilt. Knowing that she was finding a guy that looked like Five, knowing that she was using him, even though he seemed like such a caring person. 

She settled beside him on the couch, imagining that she could still make it be  _ just  _ a sex thing. If she slept with him tonight and just… didn’t call him ever again and ignored him from them on, there wouldn’t be much wrong with that, right? He would be off the hook, feel no obligation to please her any longer, and he could move on before this collapsed and fell. 

Quentin set his hand on her knee, running his thumb over her bare skin. She’d just worn shorts and a hole-y tee, not bothering to dress up, but the way his lips quirked and he glanced down at her, whatever he saw in what she was wearing was working for him. The comment he made about it made her blush, and squeezed her knee again, going back to his research. 

Okay, so maybe she couldn’t exactly ignore him. 

Involuntarily, her thighs spread just a little apart, and he grinned again, not glancing up from his research at all but clearly noticing. She cleared her throat, wanting his attention but also wanting to focus on her work. As subtle as she could, she ground against the couch, seeking friction to stave off the desire to climb onto his lap and ride him until she was only thinking his name and not Five’s. 

Vanya whimpered, and he laughed. “Do you need something, dear?”

Her hips jutted forward against the couch. The smug way he was staring at his screen was doing something for her that she knew a therapist would likely comment on, especially considering  _ why  _ it did. “Can I sit on your lap?” Vanya asked, gaining enough confidence to ask. 

The smug expression was effectively wiped off with the question, and he set the laptop down on the coffee table before glancing up expectantly, patting his lap to wordlessly offer his consent. She nearly whimpered again as she climbed onto him, grinding against his thigh instead of the couch, but he didn’t comment on it, going back to work once she’d settled onto him. He was growing hard against her, but she imagined he was waiting to see where she wanted this to go.

Or he got off on the way she was trying to get herself off on top of him while he ignored her, liked that she was needy and that he was in control-

Vanya rested her head on his shoulder, “Can you touch me?”

Five- no  _ Quentin-  _ laughed, reaching between her thighs, not bothering to ask for clarification because he was just as affected as her and teasing was too much. 

When his finger slipped inside of her folds, she yelped, and he kissed her, running his thumb over her clit. “You’re supposed to be working on writing,” Quentin reminded sternly, fingering her in earnest. “You’re the one who keeps complaining about your productivity, sweetheart.” 

She groaned, rolling her hips in time with the movements of his thumb. “Are you mad about it?” Vanya managed to stammer, teeth almost chattering as the words left her. “I could go back to work.”

As soon as she said the words, she regretted them. He pulled his fingers out from her, kissing her cheek and shaking with silent laughter, “Go back to work, then, dear.”

She felt herself pouting, not leaving his lap as she wrote out outlines in her notebook. He didn’t comment on it, just shifting her so that it was more comfortable for them both to work. He also didn’t mention it when she shrugged her shirt off, hoping it would encourage him to touch her more, but he didn’t even glance down or comment, not even when his cock twitched against her thigh. 

He did, however, cover her with a blanket, seeing the goosebumps on her skin, going back to work right after, absentmindedly combing through her hair with his fingers. It was soothing, and she felt herself grow tired while he worked. She started drifting while he researched some politician from history that she vaguely remembered being assassinated from a report she’d done when she’d gone off to boarding school. Vanya asked quietly, voice muffled by his shirt and bleery from sleepiness, “Are you like a history professor or something?”

Quentin stopped moving for a second. She could feel his heart skip a beat against his chest, and she couldn’t fathom why. “Go to sleep, sweetheart. You’re tired, and it’s late,” he murmured, kissing her forehead. 

She knew there was a reason he was being evasive again, and, for some reason, it felt more sinister than whatever reason he’d had before. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!! I hope to finish this one soon, but I’m making no promises!!!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, thank you to everyone who is still reading this story!!! Also, thank you to JjdoggieS for convincing me to update!!!💕💕💕
> 
> I don’t know if I said this in the last chapter, but make sure to read the updated tags!!!

“Are you alright?” Vanya asked Quentin when he got to her house, and he frowned in confusion. She pointed to his shirt. “You have blood, just right there on your collar.”

_ “Oh.”  _ He shrugged. “Sorry, yeah, I, uh, got a nosebleed earlier.”

“A nosebleed?” she questioned. “Here, take that off, I’ll wash it.”

“Do you have anything my size that I can change into?” 

“Uh, yeah, if you’re okay with wearing flannels or sweatshirts. You’re always dressed so formally. It might be weird to see you in them.”

He grinned. “Are you trying to get me shirtless, Seven?”

“You know, it’s really disturbing when you call me that.”

“Why is that?” Quentin asked, starting to unbutton his shirt. 

Vanya gaped at his muscular chest for a few seconds before blinking and clearing her thoughts, “Well, you’re referencing a joke you made forever ago, for one thing.”

Quentin arched a brow. “Am I not allowed to do that?”

She shrugged, “I have a weird relationship with the number seven.”

“That’s highly specific.”

“Well,  _ Five,  _ you wouldn’t understand,” Vanya grouched, remembering how she’d called him ‘Five’ that day. 

“See, when I hear you say that number, it only gets me going.”

She hit his chest lightly as he shrugged off the shirt completely. “That’s highly specific too.”

“We match, then.”

Vanya rolled her eyes, walking to her washer and searching for her detergent. She could sense Quentin at her back, and she pointed out a discrepancy she’d only noticed from her Academy days, after cleaning Five’s wounds frequently in training. While most kids were learning simple multiplication, she’d learned how to tell when blood had come from Five or somebody else, based on how it splattered. 

This was undoubtedly from someone else, and she needed him to admit it. 

“Some nosebleed,” she commented. “Was it, perchance, somebody else’s?”

He blinked. “What do you mean?” 

“The splatter indicates that it wasn’t a downworld trickle. This is somebody else’s blood, Quentin.”

The panic in his eyes reminded her of the time she’d pointed out to Five that he’d clearly gotten hurt in training. Moments later, she’d cleaned the cut under his chin. As she stared at Quentin, she noticed a faded scar in the same area, making his likeness to Five even more apparent as he watched her movements. 

Finally, he said, his voice filled with shame, “I got into a fight.”

It still felt like he was lying, but it seemed like there was some truth to what he was saying too, like he was comforted in giving her some semblance of it. 

“Alright,” Vanya said, ultimately deciding to let it go. It wasn’t like he was a killer or anything. “Are you hurt at all?”

“No, V.”

She nodded, grabbing the bleach. “You know you can be honest with me, right?”

“I… yeah, I know.”

Humming, she asked, “Can you… in the future, can you try not to lie to me, though?”

It was a pretty large request, she knew, considering the fact that they weren’t really  _ anything  _ to one another, even if she wanted them to be. Clearly, if he wasn’t comfortable enough to tell her why he had blood on his collar, then he probably didn’t think that this was anything significant at all. 

“I promise,” he said, and she knew that was a lie too.

* * *

Despite her discomfort, she couldn’t ignore what she wanted. Plus, she reasoned, if she saw him as something to fuck only, it might make things a little easier.

“Pack to spend the night,” Vanya told him, holding her telephone to her ear with her shoulder as she chopped carrots to put into the roast that had been cooking for hours. 

Quentin chuckled, voice teasing as he asked, “And how will we be spending the night?”

“Fucking, ideally.”

A few beats of silence from the other side of the call. Vanya grinned, throwing the carrots into the pot and setting her phone down while he was clearly struggling for words. As she waited for him to set his jaw back into place, she washed some potatoes off. It took several minutes before she heard him speak, and he still sounded strangled, “You… want to have sex? Sorry, I dropped something.”

She rolled her eyes. “Bring condoms, I’m out.”

“I… yes, okay. Yeah. Great. Uh-”

“You act like you’re losing your virginity-” Vanya thought about that for a few seconds. “Wait,  _ are  _ you losing your virginity?”

“Of course not,” he snapped, sounding more like himself. “I just hadn’t expected you to ever want this.”

“Why not?’ Vanya asked, bewildered that he hadn’t caught onto how many times she’d tried to get them there. 

“There was just… never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be there soon. Sorry, I got a little tied up at work.”

Work that he was still incredibly vague about. It suddenly hit her. “Are you… a  _ callboy?”  _ She settled the potatoes around the roast, grinning wickedly. 

“What gave you that idea?”

“You’re always so vague about your job, and I have decided that it’s because you’re ashamed of it.” Not letting him speak again, she mused, “Blood on your collar after work, maybe some sort of paid dom thing though I suppose if  _ you’re _ tied up you might do both... You said that historical research thing, which would be-”

“I’m not a callboy,” he interrupted. 

She wondered if he  _ wished  _ that he was, that his job was only shameful for a lot of society deeming it so.

* * *

When he got to her house, he was more polished than she’d ever seen him, like a peacock engaging in some sort of mating ritual. She found the gesture a little adorable, if she was being  _ completely  _ honest. He raised his brows at her. “You said you were making dinner on the phone?”

She nodded. 

“Vanya, there’s something that I think I should s-” 

Vanya kissed him, not letting him finish. “Don’t. I know.” 

“I… you do?”

“Don’t say anything more.” She didn’t want to hear him say sweet nothings that he didn’t mean, and she knew that Quentin would never mean them. “That’s all I ask, alright?”

“Vanya…”

She shot him a look, and he sealed his lips, eyes full of pain. “Do you want to eat dinner first?”

“Yeah, sure.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You…” A second to clear his throat. “It’s good to see you, V.”

Vanya laughed, grabbing his arm and dragging him to the kitchen. “Good to see you too. How was work, the work you  _ refuse  _ to tell me about?”

“I’d hardly say I’ve ever flat-out refused. I share some details with you.”

“Are you a spy?”

He snorted, “You watch too many movies.”

“You said you weren’t a call boy-”

“And I’m not.”

“Does your job have  _ anything  _ to do with sex?”

“My boss could learn a thing or two about sexual harassment. Would that be encompassed in anything?”

She frowned. “Your boss harasses you?”

“Nothing  _ absurd,”  _ he assured, glancing away like he’d said too much. “Just… I mean, everyone has had the urge to kill their boss at some point, right?”

“You should tell somebody about it,” Vanya said, completely serious, realizing that she’d never heard him talk about something that heavy with her before, wondering if that was something he consciously did or not. “Like, somebody higher up than them.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Forget I mentioned it.”

“Quentin?”

He arched a brow, a flash of something unrecognizable crossing his features as she said the name. After a few seconds of silence, he asked, “What is it, Vanya?”

“You can be honest with me,” she reminded him. “I won’t tell anybody anything. There’s not anybody I really  _ could  _ tell.”

“What do you mean by that, Vanya?”

It was like he was making a point to say her name, like he was trying to tell her something, trying to awaken the memories that kept tugging at the corners of her mind-

But maybe she was overthinking all of this. 

Shaking her head clear of the paranoid thoughts, she answered his question, “I just meant that you’re the only person I regularly talk to, at least in this regard.”

“Do you not talk to your family?”

She stiffened. Now was the time she could tell him about them. Vanya had wanted him to be honest with her; it was only fair that she be honest too. As she scooped food onto two plates, she decided that she’d tell him  _ some  _ things, to test the waters and see what he was comfortable hearing. “I wasn’t close to most of them, honestly. You remember the brother I told you about?”

“The one who ran away?”

“Right…” She blinked away the tears that were starting to form, not wanting to look like an emotional mess in front of Quentin. “He was my best friend… Really my only friend.”

“Nobody else?”

“The only other person that I would have considered a friend at all in that home is dead.” 

“That home…? Why do you say it like that?” His voice is politely interested, almost like he was attempting to be as nonchalant as he could. 

God, she needed to stop thinking this way. It wasn’t good for her. If he could hear her thoughts, he’d think she was paranoid as hell. 

The problem was… she’d grown up in a place that made trusting people a little hard. 

“I didn’t grow up in… It was… Just not a great place. We were adopted, I suppose…”

“You suppose?” His tone for once held absolutely no mocking, and it made her cheeks warm. When he tugged her down beside him on the table, pulling her into his lap instead of them sitting in opposite chairs, she didn’t object at all, enjoying how the contact made her feel just the slightest bit safer. 

“It wasn’t really a legal adoption, I don’t think. My brother was probably the smartest one, in running away.”

He combed through her hair with his fingers, letting her continue. When the tears started to spill over, he brushed them away easily. 

“I miss him a lot,” she admitted. “Every day, I hope that he’ll come back to me, but I sometimes think that he never will.”

“I think he’d try to come back to you…” He cleared his throat. “I mean, if you were as close as you say you were.”

She felt the need to defend Five, even if he wasn’t there. “He would do everything he could to come back to me.”

His lips twitched, almost smiling. “I can’t imagine anybody wouldn’t.”

Vanya glanced away. “I don’t think that there’s  _ anybody _ else that would. We loved each other, though, and he was all I ever truly had. When he left, I sometimes felt like there was no purpose waiting for him.”

“Don’t you think he’d be a little upset if you had given up on him?”

She smiled woodenly, knowing she must have looked like a mess to him. “I sometimes think he’s dead,” she blurted. 

He raised his brows. “What makes you think that?”

“I mean… If he actually ever cared for me, that’s the only possible explanation.”

He opened his mouth, like he wanted to argue, eventually just nodding, eyes filled with that emotion she’d seen before (and still couldn't decipher). “I’m sure he loved you, Vanya,” he said quietly. “Whether or not he’s alive, I can’t imagine him not loving you.”

“You didn’t grow up in my house,” she explained. “We weren’t… It wasn’t the kind of family that loving one another was a guarantee.”

“That’s not…” He shook his head. “Vanya, I just-”

“Can we please stop talking about this?” she interrupted. 

He made a frustrated noise. “Sure.” 

“Are you mad at me?”

“What? No, no, I’m not.” 

She wondered if he really meant it. Maybe it was a bad idea for them to sleep together tonight. 

When she started to rise from his lap, he added, “I promise you that I’m not mad, Vanya.”

“Yeah, I’m just tired all of a sudden. I might go to bed actually.”

He nodded. “Okay, are you alright, though?”

“Sure.” She climbed off of him, dragging her feet to her bedroom, feeling unbalanced, grabbing a pill from the bottle she kept in her pockets. When Quentin appeared beside her, quick enough that she imagined he was walking behind her the entire time. 

“You promise that you’re fine?”

“Can you stay the night still?”

“Of course.”

“You’re aware that I’m not-”

“I don’t  _ expect  _ sex from you, to clarify.”

“Well, yeah, but-”

The look he gave her made her seal her lips closed, knowing that he would be upset if she tried to finish that sentence. She got the idea that he was considering demanding every person that had made her feel the urge to explain herself for not wanting to have sex, and it reminded her of all the times Five used to ask her which of the others that he needed to beat up whenever she cried. 

With how long their relationship had gone on and with the knowledge that Quentin actually really did care for her, she felt a pang of guilt for comparing him to Five, especially when she had no intentions of ever telling him that she did. 

As she lay her head on his shoulder, she listened to his heartbeat start to slow. Eventually, he fell asleep, and she softly said, “I was in love with him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!!💕💕💕💕 I am hoping to have this one updated again soon, since it’s one of my shorter WIPs and I’ll be able to finish it quicker than the 25-35 chapter ones.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the kudos, comments, and bookmarks on this fic so far! I will try to be done with it as soon as possible, and, fortunately, there are only two chapters left! Hopefully you all enjoy this update, and thank you all for being so patient with me on this story, which is one of my older ones WIPs rn!

“You know something, Vanya?”

Vanya glanced up at Quentin, holding her finger to the page of her book, having decided to take a break from writing for the next… stretch of time. She was pretty sure she was having some sort of nervous breakdown. Either that, or she was in a relationship with a murderer. 

That line of thinking was probably a little paranoid.

It was just that it was becoming more and more common for her to notice blood on him. Sometimes, she’d start taking off his shirt while they made out just to see if there were more splotches against him. He always brushed it off, but she  _ knew,  _ on some level that she couldn’t entirely explain, that he was lying to her every time he did. 

“What’s that?” she asked, wondering how long it would take her to get out of her apartment and if he would be able to catch her. He was absurdly fast, popping up out of nowhere, causing her to wonder how she didn’t even hear him walk over to her. 

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I really like spending time with you.”

“What do you do for a living?” 

Quentin raised his brows. “Why are you asking?”

“Because I think that I’m seconds away from losing my mind completely,” she blurted before glancing away. “Actually, you know what? Don’t answer. I don’t want to know.”

She didn’t speak to him long enough that he left her apartment, after several failed attempts at conversation that were just her staring at her couch, wondering if she could count every single thread within it and wondering if her brother would ever come home to her. Vanya needed Five, to a degree in which she couldn’t entirely explain. All she knew was that if he was here with her, he would assure her that she was being paranoid. Or, he’d just kill Quentin if he thought that she was  _ right  _ to be paranoid. 

Her hands shook as she flipped through the copy of  _ Extra Ordinary,  _ the book that she’d yet to finish. It was her memoir, not the tale she’d spun that was somehow, at one point, become a more truthful story. She’d edited many things out. Five’s section in particular had always been  _ scarce,  _ no matter how much she tried to write about him. No matter how much she wrote on it, she couldn’t help but wonder if his chapter had become a way to  _ memorialize  _ him. 

That’s why she’d never finished it, wasn’t it? She couldn’t help but think that if she tried to publish it, or even if she just finished the book, that it would symbolize that she’d given up hope in finding him completely. It was like writing his eulogy. Over and over and over again. No matter how much she tried, she’d always given up. 

Her typewriter was beside her, staring at her accusingly. What if it became a guide home for him, rather than a farewell? It had been so long since she’d even  _ tried  _ with this story, but she could handle it if it came to mean something  _ else  _ than how she’d viewed it this entire time. 

Vanya scooped the papers up, trailing her fingers along one particular line—  _ ‘We were never a real family. We were our father’s creation, family in name but not in fact.’ _

The night she’d written that line, she’d barely gotten any sleep, having worked on other sections for hours. It wasn’t anything none of them already knew. Sir Reginald Hargreeves was not their father, and he never had been. He’d picked extraordinary children that he could use for his own purposes, told them to call each other siblings because they needed something to tell any authority figure that asked questions. Vanya had been about nineteen years old when she realized that she’d grown up in a cult, and she knew that that probably made her naive, that she’d have trusted the lies she’d been fed for that long. There was just something  _ unbelievable  _ about the fact, and she’d refused to let it click. 

It was something that she found herself doing a lot. Sometimes, when an answer was standing right in front of her, she refused to acknowledge it. If she did, then it would only lead to more questions, more feelings, more  _ pain.  _

The truth was that she knew, on some level, what was happening, but she would never accept it. 

Because it was completely and terribly heartbreaking for her to do so.

* * *

She and Five hadn’t been friends  _ immediately.  _ Though she’d always been able to understand him, better than she could any of the other people she’d grown up with, they hadn’t become one another’s confidantes until they were about six or seven. They’d still been pretty young, not even having names yet, and it had been Five to decide it. 

And by decide, she meant  _ decide.  _ He’d told her, point-blank, that they were friends. From then on, they were friends. 

Now, to clarify, Vanya hadn’t just accepted that straight off the bat. She’d let herself warm up to him, and he’d let her, aware that if he didn’t, she’d just ignore him. Five wasn’t the type of person to enjoy being ignored. 

In a way, it had been like he was courting her, bringing her small gifts that he either got from his own good behavior or just straight up stole. Vanya hadn’t really questioned his morality back then, both because she was a young child and also because she figured that if she’d had his powers, she’d have stolen frequently too. As an adult, she didn’t really question it much, either, imagining that she’d take him alive and a kleptomaniac over him dead and pure of crimes any day. 

Five hadn’t just gotten her gifts, though. He used up all of his free time spent with her, even though he’d used to spend it reading science fiction novels (or, before that, playing with the toys that he kept perfectly lined up in his room, always annoyed with anything that wasn’t methodically arranged). 

Vanya would ask him why he didn’t keep reading his sci-fi novels, and he’d been confused for a few moments before telling her that she was welcome to read his books if she wanted, like he couldn’t understand why she was asking the question. She wasn’t really sure if that had been true, but she hadn’t questioned it at the time, blushing and telling him that she would appreciate that very much, sometimes demanding that he talk about his theories with the stories. Though usually he’d shut them down by saying, ‘it wouldn’t actually work in the real world  _ because,’  _ and launching her into a tirade about some obscure math rule, that she was pretty certain he’d only used the proper terminology to describe the math to impress her. 

Eventually, she got to a point where she couldn’t deny it any longer. She was fond of him. He’d won her over, actually, simply because he’d patiently listened to her while she started ranting about Diego (though he’d only been Number Two to them at the time), telling her that he was an idiot by the time that she was done rambling. Vanya had likely shocked him when she’d leaned forward and tightly hugged him, but he’d not questioned it. When she’d told him that she was glad to have him as a friend, she could almost imagine the way his eyes would light up, the way his lips would tug into a smile, not a smirk but a real, genuine smile. 

Not that Vanya had actually seen it, but, if she thought hard enough, she could envision it with her mind.

* * *

There was no blood on him tonight. Not anywhere. She knew this because she kept pulling layers off of him, lips and teeth and tongue exploring him. 

“Fuck, Vanya,” he gasped as she started trailing her mouth downwards, tongue dragging over his stomach. She glanced up at him expectantly, feeling his cock twitch against her chest. In her position, kneeling in front of him, she didn’t feel even the slightest bit submissive. For once, it felt like she had all of the power between them, and she was basking in it. “You—” His voice cut off into a low pitched groan, and her mouth closed over him. When he rolled his hips forward, forcing her to take his cock further, she didn’t even flinch, somewhat used to this with her past partners, who more or less had expected it from her. 

It didn’t take long, and she was smug as shit when she kissed him with a mouth full of his own cum. 

When his breathing got under control, he told her, “Lean back.”

This, however, was  _ not  _ something she was used to with past partners. Quentin’s head ducked between her legs, and she lifted her thighs up a little, setting them on his shoulders, tugging his hair roughly as his stubble scratched against her skin. 

“Fi— _ uck.”  _ Thankfully, she was not yet affected enough to not have just said her brother’s name while Quentin went down on her. She was still in a reasonable enough state of mind that she’d caught onto the fact that she had indeed been about to blurt it, quickly changing it to ‘fuck’ instead, feeling him nudge at her more insistently because of it. He likely wouldn’t have even known what she was saying when she said it, but, with these things, it was best to not take chances. In the most pleading tone she could muster up, she commanded, “Keep going.” 

Quentin obliged, lapping up all of the slickness that was starting to coat her thighs, too. He interspersed all of the licks with kisses, which felt much more meaningful than what she’d done for him before. The way his tongue pressed inside of her felt like he was trying to communicate something to her, but she couldn’t tell what it meant at all. When she climaxed, she dragged him back up to her, kissing him with as much enthusiasm as she could. 

After a while spent just kissing, she could feel him beginning to harden again, gripping his cock into her hand as she reached for a condom, rolling it on him quickly and barking out the order to touch her. He listened, fingering her thoroughly before guiding himself to her entrance, thrusting into her with one fluid motion. Vanya’s head fell to the pillows, letting her mind go blank as he rocked his hips forward, seeming to fill her even more than she’d experienced before, spearing into her with a confidence that might have annoyed her in any other circumstance. As it was, her hands just gripped onto his forearms, nails digging into his skin as he fucked her. 

Vanya was right. When she called out her brother’s name, he didn’t question it, just pressing his lips to her neck and jaw, rolling his hips faster. Of course he wouldn’t question that. It wasn’t a real name. He probably just thought she had some sort of weird ass kink that involved yelling numbers in the middle of sex and was just kind of going with it. 

“Fuck, fuck,  _ f—”  _ Her stomach tensed, hips moving up on their own accord as her jaw slackened, vision going white for a few seconds. Quentin kept moving throughout her orgasm, chasing his own release now, and she just lay there, taking in the sensation of him filling her up with her mouth still open, only realizing this fact when his lips captured it, tongue sliding into her mouth insistently. 

“Vanya,” he groaned as he pulled away, looking into her eyes with some expression she couldn’t exactly place. It was anywhere from remorse to hope, and she couldn’t help but wonder how  _ she _ could feel both of those emotions, thinking of her brother as somebody else was looking at her this way but imagining a future where she was with him, regardless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll try to update soon but no promises!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This will get an update eventually.


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